January’s Table of Contents

editorial by Camille Gooderham Campbell

From the Editors

Well, our New Year’s resolution is to not miss a day! We’re glad to be rolling on into 2017, which is already looking bright and interesting if one judges by the quantity and variety of submissions we’re receiving.

Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you all for sticking with us over the rough road of the past year. We’re glad to still be here.

For Readers

To start the year, we’ve brought you “The New Year’s Buzz” by E.D.E. Bell, and we also have Michael Snyder helping you get rid of your Christmas trees on January 3rd with “Auld Lang Syne”. We’re also pleased to feature “Epiphany” by Ted Lietz on January 6th (which is, of course, Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day), and “Keeping the Natural Balance” by Sarah Crysl Akhtar for Korean New Year on January 28th.

A word about problematic comments — did you know that if three different people flag a comment as offensive, it will be hidden from view until a moderator can approve or delete it? Please don’t respond to or engage with problematic comments at all; just flag them and we’ll deal with them. If you’d like to also contact us to express your particular concerns about the comment(s), that’s welcome too, but the flagging part is important. Engaging publicly with trolls only gets attention for the trolls and creates problems for the moderators.

As always, we hope and trust that you’ll enjoy the month’s stories, and we encourage you to comment on the stories and share them with your friends — community engagement is a big part of what makes EDF what it is.

For Writers

You may have noticed that we have special submission categories open for stories targeted at upcoming months. This means that Valentine stories, for example, get submitted to February’s special queue rather than our regular submissions queue — and yes, we’re looking for February-specific stories right now, including but not limited to Groundhog Day, The Super Bowl, of course Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras / Shrove Tuesday, Maha Shivaratri, and The Oscars / Academy Awards. Please note, though, that this is not a means of jumping the regular queue to be considered for February; it’s for stories that would only be suitable for publication in February (because we’re not going to publish your Valentine piece or your Oscar party story in March, right?). Using the February queue and then putting “n/a” or “anytime” is not a way to impress our editorial team, shall we say? The window for February closes on January 27th (and March’s queue will be open soon too, so start thinking about Purim and St. Patrick’s Day and Spring Break).

But right now, let’s get on with the good stuff…

January’s Table of Contents